Amiga recommendations?

A bridgeboard is basically a separate PC on a card. If I remember correctly it runs DOS or Windows at the same time as the Amiga OS runs on the 68k, so there's no need to dual boot. If that's what you meant by putting an x86 in an Amiga, sure you can do that.

A bridgeboard is basically a separate PC on a card. If I remember correctly it runs DOS or Windows at the same time as the Amiga OS runs on the 68k, so there's no need to dual boot. If that's what you meant by putting an x86 in an Amiga, sure you can do that.

if I can switch between them, that'd lead to shenanigans, most likely.

My point is that if you are just about to get into retro Amiga / DOS hardware, it may be sensible to start out simple with easy-to-obtain parts. I didn't look it up but a full 486 computer + A500 might be much cheaper and easier to find than one of those bridge boards plus everything else required for it. If you really want to, you can still try to find one later but quite honestly I wouldn't make it a #1 priority, in particular if you have no experience with the subject.

My point is that if you are just about to get into retro Amiga / DOS hardware, it may be sensible to start out simple with easy-to-obtain parts. I didn't look it up but a full 486 computer + A500 might be much cheaper and easier to find than one of those bridge boards plus everything else required for it. If you really want to, you can still try to find one later but quite honestly I wouldn't make it a #1 priority, in particular if you have no experience with the subject.

Okay, I've been day-dreaming about this for a while, but never really researched what it would take to make it a reality: what's the ultimate Video Toaster setup? A tower case Amiga + the Toaster card, but which Amiga? Any useful expansions to this setup?

I think the Video Toaster still has potential for video editing, and I would like to study its transitions & other FX, possibly to replicate some of them on modern platforms. I just don't know what the ideal setup for such a video editing workstation would be!

I have no personal experience, so these are just some points from reading about it back in the day. The latest version is the Video Toaster 4000, which takes advantage of Amiga 4000 features. There's also the Video Toaster Flyer expansion, which adds non-linear editing. If you're in Europe, do note that Video Toaster products only support NTSC, not PAL. The source code for most of the Video Toaster software is available if you want to study it.

If you want to get a proper oldskool experience, buy an A500 and a CRT monitor and watch demos and Eurocharts. And then make some effects with Asmone following Photon's video tutorials https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p83QUZ1-P10

The 1084 is pretty much the "official" Amiga 500 monitor. However, it exists in countless variants, with CRT from different manufacturers, so any monitor with similar specs will probably do the trick, as long as you can hook it up via RGB. The 1084 screen is quite small by modern standards, which may or may not be a blessing, considering the bulk and weight of a CRT.

The Amiga branded M1438S (produced by Microvitec) was introduced by Amiga Technologies after the bankruptcy of Commodore for use with the Amiga 1200 and its higher resolution modes. It will work with an Amiga 500, but the CRT has different specs from the Commodore 1084, so the picture could look different (not sure by how much).

I've seen reports that the M1438S CRT's much finer dot pitch results in a sharper image, so low resolution output (from e.g. Amiga 500) looks more blocky/pixelated than on a 1024. I haven't compared them myself, but a similar effect is noticeable on PC VGA monitors, although low resolutions have twice the number of scan lines in that case.

Yes, I was talking about PC VGA for comparison. Anyway, the point is that some people perceive the M1438S CRT's sharper image as more pixelated than video monitors like the 1084, so I thought it's a caveat worth mentioning for those who want the traditional low resolution experience.